Published: Sunday, July 28, 2013 at 03:03 AM.

Before reading Neal Thompson’s “A Curious Man: The Strange and Brilliant Life of Robert ‘Believe It or Not’ Ripley,” my only impressions of the man and his franchise were from skimming through his books in my elementary school library and a visit to one of his “odditoriums” at Myrtle Beach.

I’m not sure if I even knew that there was a real person behind the name Ripley, but through Thompson’s biography, I quickly learned that Ripley was an American phenomenon, beloved, or at least recognized, worldwide.

He was friends with the likes of Babe Ruth and Will Rogers, had a song written about him by Irving Berlin, and for a time, received close to 3,000 letters a day from his fans. Through the heady days of the 1920s, the hardships of the Depression, and the upheaval of World War II, Robert Ripley provided entertainment and diversion to an amazingly wide audience.

LeRoy Robert Ripley was born in 1890 and grew up in a working class family in Santa Rosa, Calif. Saddled with big ears, a stutter and horrible buckteeth that added to his speech impediment, young Ripley spent much of his childhood alone drawing or reading books about faraway places.

Despite his shyness, he was adventurous and loved to sneak off to Santa Rosa’s Chinatown and explore the noisy, crowded shops and restaurants with all of their exotic sights and smells. His sense of adventure and curiosity would stay with him throughout his life and he would eventually make his living traveling worldwide to observe the bizarre and obscure and bring these “queeriosities” to the masses through his cartoons and, eventually, radio, film, books and a personal collection of artifacts.

Before reading Neal Thompson’s “A Curious Man: The Strange and Brilliant Life of Robert ‘Believe It or Not’ Ripley,” my only impressions of the man and his franchise were from skimming through his books in my elementary school library and a visit to one of his “odditoriums” at Myrtle Beach.

I’m not sure if I even knew that there was a real person behind the name Ripley, but through Thompson’s biography, I quickly learned that Ripley was an American phenomenon, beloved, or at least recognized, worldwide.

He was friends with the likes of Babe Ruth and Will Rogers, had a song written about him by Irving Berlin, and for a time, received close to 3,000 letters a day from his fans. Through the heady days of the 1920s, the hardships of the Depression, and the upheaval of World War II, Robert Ripley provided entertainment and diversion to an amazingly wide audience.

LeRoy Robert Ripley was born in 1890 and grew up in a working class family in Santa Rosa, Calif. Saddled with big ears, a stutter and horrible buckteeth that added to his speech impediment, young Ripley spent much of his childhood alone drawing or reading books about faraway places.

Despite his shyness, he was adventurous and loved to sneak off to Santa Rosa’s Chinatown and explore the noisy, crowded shops and restaurants with all of their exotic sights and smells. His sense of adventure and curiosity would stay with him throughout his life and he would eventually make his living traveling worldwide to observe the bizarre and obscure and bring these “queeriosities” to the masses through his cartoons and, eventually, radio, film, books and a personal collection of artifacts.

Ripley began drawing seriously in high school when a thoughtful English teacher allowed him to execute his assignments through sketches, sparing him the humiliation of reading his papers to his classmates.

At age 19, his course in life was set when a freelance journalist boarding in the Ripley house recognized his talent and offered to take his portfolio to some of her newspaper cohorts in San Francisco. Several months later, Ripley was a cartoonist for the Press Democrat, and though not instantly successful, began his very illustrious career.

Ripley eventually ended up in New York working for some of the biggest names in journalism. Despite his lack of good looks and awkwardness, he possessed a confidence that allowed him to take chances and promote himself, and he was always a part of a large social circle.

Ripley was the quintessential man’s man. He loved to drink and managed to do so quite well even through prohibition. He was athletic, playing baseball and handball at a semi-professional level. But he also was a lady’s man and womanizer and almost always had an ever-changing entourage of beautiful women in his company.

The one point that Thompson makes again and again in “A Curious Man” is just how popular, successful and influential Ripley was during his career. One of his cartoons spurred Congress to finally and officially adopt “The Star-Spangled Banner” as our national anthem.

During the Great Depression, Ripley’s cartoons were especially just what the people wanted, an entertaining diversion from all of their troubles, and in a 1936 national poll that asked young boys whose job they would most like to have, Robert Ripley came in No. 1, ahead of J. Edgar Hoover and James Cagney.

LeRoy Robert Ripley was an amalgamation of contradictions. He was odd-looking but had no trouble attracting women. He was shy and awkward but continually put himself in the limelight. He loved to travel and admired others from different cultures but at the same time looked down on them as backward and dirty.

Whatever he was, he was a curious man. To learn more, check out “A Curious Man” by Neal Thompson.

Katherine Arends is library manager at Mebane Public Library. Contact her at karends@alamancelibraries.org or call (919) 563-6431.